I believe in karma to a point. Problem is I see people who are absolutely horrible people who do terrible things and nothing happens to them. Then again, I also don't see them in their homes so it may be that they are totally miserable.

In any event it makes believing in anything that has the "what goes around, comes around" idealolgy kind of hard to swallow.

Did that make sense?

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"Tis a human trait to hate one you have wronged" - SenecaI am responsible for what I write and say. I am not responsible for what you read or understand.

Karma is inescapable. It simply means "action". It has no sense of moral purpose, it's no avenging righter of wrongs, it has no more ethical quotient than Newton's first law of motion. It needs no Deity or Human action to effect it's influence on the Universe.

It isn't a dynamic agent, like the God-forms and Archetypes people use to identify certain patterns. It is Dynamism. It rolls over, fills, and swallows every action ever, whether intended or not like some blind, idiot muscle. It is a Law in the truest sense. Inescapable, unbreakable, and non-partisan.

I blame the risible misunderstanding of the Bhagivad Gita that inspired John Lennon's "Instant Karma" for the popular Western idea of Karma. We don't get what we deserve in this thing we call "life", we get what we get. End of.

In Buddhist teaching, the law of karma, says only this: `for every event that occurs, there will follow another event whose existence was caused by the first, and this second event will be pleasant or unpleasant according as its cause was skillful or unskillful.' A skillful event is one that is not accompanied by craving, resistance or delusions; an unskillful event is one that is accompanied by any one of those things. (Events are not skillful in themselves, but are so called only in virtue of the mental events that occur with them.)

Therefore, the law of Karma teaches that responsibility for unskillful actions is born by the person who commits them.

Essentially, because we know that unpleasant effects are the result of unskillful events, and we know the mental processes that generate them, we can use it as a metric for future events, to hopefully avoid the unskillful ones...

Karma just means "Action". It's not some kind of good deed pention plan for the afterlife. Nor does it consider morality. It is completely non-negotiable, unstoppable, fluid, and devoid of any purpose or agenda.

It's not keeping a tab on us, or any kind of score. It doesn't care what you did last summer, doesn't spell vendetta with a 'V' You cannot feel it, or touch it, and you can only observe it's effect on the World, if you can find a place of perfect stillness to watch from.

It is unmitigated and uncompromising. It will not notice you, but it is inescapable. It is the first movement of the first molecule of matter. It is a Principality, and can't be diverted, invoked, avoided, or streamed. It moves simultaneously through all things, and everything resonates to it.

Karma will not 'reward' the man who spends his life doing "good" deeds, and it will not punish the wicked. It doesn't care if your name is Adolf Hitler, or Earl Hickey. It does not "come and go" it just is. It's colours are not like your dreams, red gold and green. It's not your lover, or your rival.

Sorry, but I have a question based on the topic. Any ideas on wands? I dont want to have a rod of wood. Something else. Any ideas? I've read about using your forefinger. But I really want to get creative and I'm at a dead end. I've tried googling it, but it only says making wands out of wood, but I really want to use something else.

I walked by a beautiful cherry tree. I was tempted to retrieve one of it's branches for use as a wand...

but then I realized that I might rather have a ripe cherry to eat in due time than to steal one of it's branches so that I might have a wand. (and no, I'm not the one who was asking about wands, I just thought I'd share my feelings about delicious, delicious cherries )

Personally, I would never cut off a live branch to make a tool. I would wait until one fell or take a dead one that is still left on the tree. If you do decide to remove a live or dead branch from the tree, I would ask permission first and then thank it for its sacrifice if it gives its permission. I wouldn't want someone to cut off one of my fingers without asking permission first.